Design and Art Australia Online

Bundjalung-Munajali woman Euphemia Bostock was born at Tweed Heads, NSW, in 1936. She has worked across a variety of media including textile, sculpture and printmaking since the 1960s. Her artistic training took place at the East Sydney Technical College, Sydney College of the Arts, and Redfern’s Eora Centre.

Bostock was a founding co-member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artist’s Cooperative in 1987, for which she designed the Boomalli logo. In that same year her clothing designs were showcased in Paris, along with the work of Bronwyn Bancroft and Mini Heath, at the Au Printemps Department Store exhibition 'Australis down under’. Other exhibitions include the Museum of Sydney’s 'Bamaradbanga (to make open)’ in 1999, and 'Tactility – two centuries of Indigenous textiles and fibre’ at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in 2003. Bostock’s most recognisable work is the 'Possom Skin Design’ screen print she produced in 1990. According to the online catalogue of the NGA’s 'Tactility’ exhibition, this design was informed by the artist’s experience of seeing an incised possum skin cloak from the 19th Century, displayed in the Museum of Victoria in Melbourne. Compelled by the realisation that Aboriginal cultural material from the South-East of Australia was rarely displayed in public collections, the cloak inspired her to create a modern interpretation. In 1999 a section of the design was reproduced on an Australia Post Stam

'Possom Skin Design’ fabric is in the collections of the NGA and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and Bostock is also represented in the National Museum of Australia. In 2001 she produced a collaborative Reconciliation Sculpture with artist Jan Shaw for Macquarie University’s Sculpture Garden. Bostock shares a creative and activist spirit with other members of her family. Her brother Lester is a highly regarded and pioneering Indigenous television, film and radio producer. Euphemia, Lester and their brother Gerald were founding members of Sydney’s Aboriginal Black Theatre in 1972, and Bostock was also present for the early days of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. Bronwyn Bancroft , writing in the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture , writes: 'Euphemia Bostock epitomises all that is special about Aboriginal life – she is the matriarch of an extended family, active in political life, working in many levels of artistic practice, and a mentor for her people.’

Writers:

Fisher, Laura

Date written:

2007

Last updated:

2011